Commons Registration

Hampshire County Council is the Commons Registration Authority for the county of Hampshire.

We compile, maintain and, if appropriate, amend the registers of commons and town and village greens. We do not normally become involved in the management of commons or the enforcement or protection of rights of common, unless we happen also to be the owners of those commons, or manage them by agreement.

Public access to registered commons

Contrary to popular belief, there was no historic public right of access to common land. However, the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 now allows a public right of access on foot over most registered commons. More information about access to open country.

Commons owned or managed by Hampshire County Council

Hampshire County Council has no obligation to enforce the proper management of commons or become involved in disputes concerning them.

However, the following commons (or parts of them) are owned or managed by us. Any queries about management of these commons may be directed to

Commons in the New Forest

Commons enquiries

Until we are able to present the information online, the only way to check whether land is registered as a common or town or village green is to inspect the original registers held at Castle Avenue, Winchester.

Alternatively you can inspect the register in person or use our search service, which costs £47 for a search taking up to an hour to complete. Include a map showing the area of land in which you are interested and a cheque payable to 'Hampshire County Council'.

Applications to amend Commons and Town or Village Green Registers

Hampshire County Council, in its capacity as a Commons Registration Authority, keeps registers of commons and town or village greens, and the Commons Act 2006 (‘the 2006 Act’) has provisions to allow the amendment of these registers.

It will be possible from 15 December 2014 for people to apply to the County Council to amend the commons and village green registers. In most cases, a fee will be payable.

Wrongly registered land

The registers of common land and town or village green were first prepared under the Commons Registration Act 1965, and continue to be maintained by Commons Registration Authorities (generally county councils and unitary authorities). In some cases, the original applications to register land included maps that were difficult to interpret, or incorrectly defined the land’s boundaries. This led to some land registered under the 1965 Act being wrongly registered as common or town or village green. Paragraphs 6 to 9 of Schedule 2 to the Commons Act 2006 enable you to apply to your commons registration authority to deregister certain types of land and buildings that were wrongly registered as either common land or town or village green.

Removing wrongly registered Common Land or Village Greens from the register

You may be able to remove land from the registers if you can show the land to have been wrongly registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965. You can also apply to deregister common land or village green where the land was built upon at the time of the original registration, and is still built upon at the time that your application is decided. You must apply by 28 February 2027.

Deregistration of buildings

You may be able to apply under paragraphs 6 or 8 of Schedule 2 to the 2006 Act to deregister land which is, and has been, covered by a building or the curtilage of a building ever since the land was registered under the 1965 Act. Such land may include cottages or garden on or abutting to the common or green. It does not matter whether the building or curtilage was lawfully present on the land when the land was registered provisionally under the 1965 Act. It is not necessary either that the land has been covered by the same building throughout the period since the date of provisional registration. It would be sufficient, for example, that the land had, at the date of registration, been covered by a garage adjacent to a house, but the garage had subsequently been demolished, and the land had become part of the garden attached to that house.

Corrections to the registers

In some cases inaccurate information was recorded in the Commons Registers. Section 19 of the 2006 Act allows for applications to be made by any person to correct some types of errors in the registers, so that the registers are a more accurate record of registered land and rights of common. This affords better protection of common land.

Correcting errors

You can apply under section 19 to correct any error in the register which was made by the commons registration authority, when an entry was made, or amended, in the register. Some examples are:

If an error was made mapping the boundary of a common during the provisional registration stage

If, when amending an entry in the register, the authority erroneously added a zero the number of rights recorded

Duplicate entries

You can apply to remove a duplicate entry in the register. These sometimes happened when an application was originally made for provisional registration of a right of common under the 1965 Act, by both the tenant of a farm exercising the right, and the owner of the farm. If no objection was made to either provisional registration, they both became final.

Updating names and addresses

You can apply to update any name or address shown in the register. In general, this will be an entry which relates to the registered owner of a right of common held in gross (that is, as a ‘personal’ possession). You cannot apply to update the details of a name or address entered against a right of common attached to land in column 3 of the rights section of the register, because those details record the name of the person who applied for the registration of the right, and not to any successor in title.

Accretion or diluvion

You can apply to update an entry in the register to take account of the common law principles of ‘accretion’ or ‘diluvion’. These apply to all land where the ownership boundary follows a body of water. If, by gradual, almost imperceptible additions in the normal course of events, land is added on one side of the water body, that land falls into the ownership of the person owning the rest of the land on that side. The boundary line would then have correspondingly changed. The reverse is the case where there has been a washing away, or diluvion, eroding the land on the other side. If the land affected is also subject to common right, those rights of the commoners will adjust, along with the rights of the owners.

Fees

There are fees for some applications under section 19 to amend the register.

Additional fees may be charged by the Planning Inspectorate, where they are involved in processing an application - Further information

Your application will need to include evidence to show how the mistake or error was originally made.

Applications made under Section 19 of the 2006 Act

Purpose of application

Hampshire County Council Application Fee

Correction, for the purpose of section 19(2)(a), of a mistake made by registration authority

No fee payable to Hampshire County Council. A fee is due to Planning Inspectorate

Correction, for the purpose described in section 19(2)(b), of a mistake other than extent of land registered as common land or town or village green, or what can be done by virtue of a right of common

£200

Correction, for the purpose described in section 19(2)(c), to remove a duplicate entry from the register

£200

Correction, for the purpose described in section 19(2)(d), to update the details of any name or address referred to in an entry

£50

Correction, for the purpose described in section 19(2)(e), to update an entry in the register to take account of accretion or diluvion

£200

Applications made under Schedule 2, paragraphs 6-9 of the 2006 Act

Deregistration of certain land registered as common land or as a town or village green

£1000

How to apply

The forms required for an application to rectify a commons or town or village green application can be found below.

Before completing any of these forms, you are strongly advised to read the Guidance to Applicants published by Defra

Please Note: Any party involved in an application to correct a commons or town or village green register may wish to obtain their own independent legal advice. Hampshire County Council, as the Commons Registration Authority, is unable to provide this.